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LINCOLN  ROOM 

UNIVERSITY  OF  ILLINOIS 
LIBRARY 


MEMORIAL 

the  Class  of  1901 

founded  by 

HARLAN  HOYT  HORNER 

and 

HENRIETTA  CALHOUN  HORNER 


_J 


_) 


-J 


ADDRESSES 


BY  THE 


Hon.  CHAUNCEY  M.  DEPEW,  LL.D., 


ON   THE   OCCASION   OP  THE 


Gelebration  of  tlie  Birthday  of  klmhm  Lincoln 


AT 


Burliugtou,  Vermont,  Feb.  12tli,  1895, 


AT  THE 


Gommencement  Exercises  of  the  University  of  Gtiicago, 

April     1st,     1895, 


AND  AT 

His    Birtl^day    Dii^i>er, 

TENDERED     HIM     BY     THE 

NIONTAUK     CLUB     OK     BROOKLYN, 
April     20thL,     1895. 


-J 


ADDRKSS 


OF 


Hon.  CHAUNCEY  M.  DEPEW,  LL.  D., 

ON  THE  OCCASION  OP  THE  CELEBRATION  OF  THE 

Birthday  of  Abraham  Lincoln, 

AT 

BURLINQTOM,  VERNIONT, 
FEBRUARY  12th,  1895. 


Ladies  and  Gentlemen  : 

The  pleasure  of  aiDpearing  before  you  this  after- 
noon is  great,  but  marred  by  circumstances.  I  had 
supposed  the  occasion  was  to  be  the  usual  recrea- 
tion for  a  busy  man  of  the  after-dinner  speech  which 
pleasantly  occupies  the  mind  without  tiring  it.  To 
have  it  transformed  into  an  afternoon  address  or 
oration  means  a  preparation,  or  the  use  of  the  Hor- 
atian  method  of  the  file  and  thumb-nail,  and  my 
conditions  made  that  impossible.  You  will  pardon 
the  absence  of  formality  and  accept  the  earnest- 
ness with  which  I  approach  a  subject  so  grand  in  it- 
self as  the  hero  whose  memory  ,we  celebrate,  and 
principles  so  enduring  and  vivifying  as  those  of 
the  party  of  which  he  is  the  greatest  ornament. 

The  tendency  in  all  times  has  been  for  the  people 
to  grow  so  far  apart  from    their  National  heroes 


2 

that  tlie  hero  becomes  impossible.      We  cannot 
live  with  perfection  ;    we  cannot  have   the'  cam- 
araderie of  personal  communion  with  saints.     The 
force  and  effect  of  continuing  leadership  is  to  be  in 
touch  with  the  leader.     We  have  idealized  already 
the    worthies    of    the  revolutionary    period,    and 
especially  Washington,  so  that  they  are  out  of  the 
pale  of  humanity.     To  us  they  never  possessed  the 
foibles  and  weaknesses  which   are  common  to  our 
race.     I  doubt  if  Washington  ever  did.     I  had  oc- 
casion at  the  time  of  the  Centennial  to  study  closely 
his   character  and   career.     It   was  impossible   to 
lower  him  to  any  plane  where  a  horizontal  view 
could  be  had  of  him.     In  the  camp  and  in  the  cab- 
inet, in  the  Continental  Convention  and  around  the 
campfire,  in  the  midst  of  his  soldiers,  or  at  the  mess 
with  his  staff,  he  was  always  the  same  dignified, 
majestic  and  unapproachable  figure.     For  the  times 
in  which  he  lived,  for  the  mission  to  which  he  was 
destined,  these  lofty  characteristics  were  appropri- 
ate.    The  revolution  knew  little  of  the  fierce  dem- 
ocracy.    The  classes  and  the  masses  were  distinctly 
defined  and  separated.     The  pride  of  birth,   of  an- 
cestry    and    landed     proprietorship)     was      never 
more      distinctly     asserted      and      never       more 
generally  recognized.     It  is  probable  that  for  the 
purpose  of  bringing  the  wealth  and  the  intelligence 
of  the  country  to  the  support  of  the  patriot  cause 
it  was  necessary  that  one  of  this  class  who  was  infi- 
nitely superior  to  his  fellows,  and  whose  aim  and 
ambition  were  only  his  country  and  its  liberties, 


3 

should  lead  the  movement.  The  processes  of  evo- 
lution of  democracy  for  one  hundred  years  had 
created  a  condition  where  Washington  would  have 
been  a  failure  in  the  Civil  War.  Abraham  Lincoln, 
his  opj)osite  in  every  respect,  because  he  was  so 
different,  was  the  most  successful  leader  of  any  re- 
volution of  modern  or  ancient  times. 

As  we  study  the  characteristics  which  made  Lin- 
coln great  and  successful,  we  find  them  not  in  the 
usual  gifts  of  great  statesmen.  Others  have  been 
more  cultured,  others  have  had  more  genius, 
others  have  had  more  experience  and  training,  but 
none  of  any  time  had  as  the  motive  power  of  every 
action  an  indomitable  and  resistless  moral  force. 
You  may  call  it  the  principle  of  natural  religion, 
or  whatever  you  may.  It  was  an  instinct  for  the 
right,  a  comprehension  of  justice,  a  boundless 
sympathy  and  compassion,  an  intense  and  yearn- 
ing love  for  his  fellows  and  their  welfare  which 
knew  neither  rank  nor  race,  but  gathered  within 
its  boundless  charity  all  mankind.  The  force  and 
effect  of  this  power  in  Lincoln  can  be  best  illus- 
trated by  the  contrast  between  him  and  his  great 
antagonist,  Douglas.  Douglas  was  born  in  Ver- 
mont ;  about  him  were  all  the  influences  of  this 
liberty-loving  and  intelligent  commonwealth  ;  his 
father  was  a  clergyman,  a  college  graduate,  a  man 
of  brains  and  culture,  and  his  mother  a  worthy 
helpmeet  for  her  minister  husband.  Every  author- 
ity of  environment  and  atmosphere  was  for  right, 
justice  and  liberty.     His  struggles  with  poverty 


J 


were  not  those  which  enervate  or  degrade,  but 
those  which  inspire  men  of  fiber,  energy,  ambition 
and  genius  to  the  efforts  wbich  make  a  career.  His 
natural  abilities,  trained  in  the  best  of  schools, 
made  him  a  teacher,  a  lawyer,  a  judge,  a  legislator, 
a  senator  and  the  leader  of  his  party.  It  made 
him  the  ablest  of  debaters  in  the  United  States 
Senate,  the  most  formidable  of  foes  upon  the 
platform  in  a  political  campaign,  and  the  most 
adroit  of  politicians  in  framing  issues  which 
should  capture  or  mislead  the  people.  In 
any  condition  of  the  country's  affairs,  when 
great  moral  questions  were  not  at  issae, 
Stephen  A.  Douglas  would  have  been  President. 
Lincoln,  on  the  other  hand,  was  born  in  a  slave 
State,  the  son  of  a  poor  white,  and  lived  during  his 
early  youth  in  a  cabin  of  one  room,  under  condi- 
tions of  abject  poverty  and  ignorance.  His  mother 
died,  his  shiftless  father  moved  to  Indiana,  a  log 
cabin  was  erected  which  had  neither  partitions  nor 
floors  and  scarcely  windows  or  doors,  a  few  acres 
were  cleared  to  get  the  bare  necessaries  of  life, 
and  almost  at  the  period  of  manhood  Lincoln  had 
no  education,  was  dressed  in  skins,  was  associated 
with  semi-savages  who  relieved  the  hard  conditions 
of  their  lives  by  brntal  debauches  and  equally 
brutal  fights  among  themselves,  and  yet  he  remained 
uncontaminated  by  the  drinking,  swearing,  idle 
loafers,  roughs  or  thugs  who  constituted  his  com- 
panionship. His  energies  would  be  shown  occa- 
sionally with  his  enormous  strength  in  protecting 


the  weak  or  rescuing  the  defeated,  and  a  promise 
of  his  future  powers  given  by  holding  spellbound 
at  times  his  rough  auditors  by  his  rustic  eloquence, 
or  entertaining  them  at  night  with  his  endless  fund 
of  anecdote,  drollery  and  mimicry.  An  insatiable 
craving  for  knowledge  led  him  to  learn  to  read  and 
to  write.  The  only  books  within  miles  about  him 
were  Robinson  Crusoe,  a  short  history  of  the  United 
States,  Weem'sLifeof  Washington,  and  Bunyan's 
Pilgrim's  Progress.  These  he  soon  knew  by  heart. 
This  master  of  the  English  tongue,  this  most  felici- 
tous of  phrase  makers,  this  most  eloquent  of 
speakers,  framed  his  sentences  and  formed  his 
style  by  writing  compositions  with  charcoal  upon 
a  wooden  shovel  or  the  shingles  from  the  mill.  A 
clerk  in  a  store  on  starvation  wages,  a  storekeeper 
without  capital,  and  his  business  sold  out  by  the 
sheriff,  a  surveyor  earning  ten  or  fifteen  dollars  a 
month,  and  a  lawyer  with  no  other  equipment  than 
Blackstone  and  the  statutes  of  Illinois — such  was 
Lincoln  at  a  period  when  the  accomplished  and 
cultured  Douglas  was  already  the  idol  of  his  State. 
And  yet  thus,  on  the  threshold  of  a  career,  with 
such  surroundings,  such  teachings  and  such  im- 
pressions, in  the  midst  of  a  community  which 
drank,  Lincoln  was  a  temperance  man ;  in  the 
midst  of  a  community  that  swore,  Lincoln  was 
free  from  blasphemy ;  in  the  midst  of  a  com- 
munity not  highly  moral,  Lincoln  was  as 
pure  as  an  angel ;  in  the  midst  of  a  com- 
munity which  regarded  the   negro   as  no  better 


6 

than  the  horse  or  the  mule,  Lincoln  was  an  abol- 
itionist. 

Sailing  down  the  Mississippi  River  up)on  a  flat 
boat,  with  a  crew  composed  of  his  rough  comrades, 
who  boasted  they  were  half  horse  and  half  alli- 
gator, who  anchored  at  night  for  roystering  riots 
in  the  villages  and  continued  them  when  they 
reached  ISIew  Orleans,  Lincoln  was  apart  from 
them,  while  of  them.  He  wandered  one  day  into 
the  slave  market  and  saw  a  young  girl  put  up  at 
auction.  He  witnessed  the  brutal  examination  of 
her  by  the  buyers  and  spectators,  the  coarse  jokes 
that  were  exchanged  in  the  crowd  and  the  cynical 
beastliness  of  the  auctioneer,  and  the  slumbering 
fire  of  moral  and  religious  wrath  planted  in  him  by 
his  mother,  or  inherited  from  some  saintly  ances- 
tor, broke  out  with  the  declaration,  "If  I  live,  the 
day  will  come  when  I  will  hit  slavery  a  blow  from 
which  it  shall  perish."  That  slave  girl  on  the 
block  aroused  the  moral  forces  within  him  which 
kept  him  from  the  temptations  of  his  environ- 
ment and  made  him  the  hero  and  tlie  martyr  of 
liberty. 

The  peoples  in  all  ages  have  loved  gladiatorial 
combats,  whether  of  the  mind  or  muscle.  The 
keen  delight  of  the  Greek  in  the  contests  of  his 
orators,  and  of  the  Roman  in  the  bloody  fights  of 
his  gladiators,  illustrated  the  principle.  The  de- 
bate between  Douglas,  the  leader  of  his  party,  the 
inventor  of  the  phrase,  "popular  sovereignty," 
which  was  to  stand  both  for  the  priucii^le  and  the 


policy  which  would  save  his  party  from  being  over- 
whelmed by  the  rising  spirit  of  liberty  in  the  coun- 
try, and  the  possible  President  of  the  United 
States,  and  a  man  who,  though  unknown,  excited 
interest  because  the  Republican  party  in  his  State 
deemed  him  worthy  to  be  placed  against  the 
champion,  was  a  picture  which  made  Illinois  the 
battle  ground  of  freedom.  If  Lincoln  had  pos- 
sessed less  of  this  controlling  moral  principle — if 
he  had  been  actuated  by  the  same  motives  which 
governed  Douglas— if  his  God  had  been  his  per- 
sonal ambition  more  than  the  welfare  of  the  race, 
or  the  Presidency  more  than  patriotism — he  would 
have  defeated  Douglas.  The  repeal  of  the  Mis- 
souri Compromise  had  thrown  open  the  territories 
of  the  great  northwest  to  slavery.  Douglas  had 
met  the  rising  tide  of  indignation  and  stemmed  it 
by  a  proposition  which  apparently  left  the  people 
of  the  territory  to  decide  whether  their  institutions 
should  be  free  or  slave.  The  decision  of  the  Su- 
preme Court  in  the  Dred  Scott  case  had  shown  that 
this  alleged  principle  was  a  flimsy  pretext.  Never- 
theless it  was  generally  accepted.  The  South  was 
committed  to  slavery  and  regarded  its  extension 
as  necessary  to  the  existence  of  the  system.  The 
business  of  the  North  was  bound  up  in  the  preser- 
vation of  slavery.  The  press  and  the  iiuli)it  were 
largely  with  their  congregations,  their  constitu- 
encies and  their  readers.  "Abolitionist"  was  a 
term  of  reproach  and  opprobrium.  "  Anti- 
slavery "  was  little  better.     To  touch   slavery   was 


8 

to  touch  the  Union,  and  to  touch  the  Union  was  to 
imperil  the  Republic,  and  so  slavery  became  the 
cornerstone  of  the  Republic.  The  Declaration  of 
Independence  was  an  empty  sound  for  Fourth  of 
July  declamations  and  assaiilts  upon  the  mon- 
archial  systems  of  other  countries.  Lincoln  wrote 
his  speech.  He  read  it  to  the  leaders  of  his  party. 
It  was  based  upon  this  thought,  couched  in  these 
words,  "  A  house  divided  against  itself  cannot 
stand.  I  believe  this  government  cannot  endure 
permanently  half  slave  and  half  free.  I  do  not 
expect  the  Union  to  be  dissolved.  I  do  not  expect 
the  house  to  fall,  but  I  expect  it  will  cease  to  be 
divided.  It  will  become  all  one  thing  or  all  the 
other.  Either  the  opponents  of  slavery  will  arrest 
the  further  spread  of  it,  and  place  it  where  the 
public  mind  shall  rest  in  the  belief  that  it  is  in  the 
course  of  ultimate  extinction ;  or  its  advocates 
will  push  it  forward,  till  it  shall  become  alike 
lawful  in  all  the  States  —  old  as  well  as  new,  north 
as  well  as  south."  The  leaders  of  the  party  with 
one  voice  said,  "That  speech  defeats  you  and 
elects  Douglas."  "  Ah  !  "  said  Lincoln,  "  I  know 
that,  but  I  am  looking  beyond  Douglas  and  be- 
yond the  Senatorship.  That  sentiment  appeals  to 
the  conscience  of  the  north  against  the  extension 
of  slavery  in  the  territories  and  against  the  system 
of  slavery."  It  was  the  gauntlet  of  liberty 
thrown  into  the  arena  which  began  the  battle  that 
ended  with  the  publication  of  the  Proclamation 
of  Emancipation. 


There  never  was  sncli  a  President  —  never  such 
a  ruler  as  Abraham  Lincoln.  He  did  not  repre- 
sent hereditary  privileges,  for  he  came  from  the 
plainest  of  the  plain  people  ;  he  did  not  repre- 
sent heredity,  for  he  had  none  ;  lie  did  not 
represent  the  colleges  or  the  universities,  for 
he  knew  them  not  ;  he  did  not  represent  capital 
and  great  accumulations,  for  he  had  neither  ;  but 
he  did  represent  the  toiler  upon  the  farm,  in  the 
workshop,  upon  the  highway,  in  the  factory,  any- 
where, everywhere  where  honest  men  and  honest 
women  were  striving  to  better  their  conditions  and 
to  illustrate  the  dignity  of  labor  and  the  nobility 
of  American  citizenship.  Without  this  touch  with 
the  plain  people  his  ability,  his  genius,  would  have 
made  him  distrusted,  for  it  may  be  taken  as  almost 
an  axiom  that  there"  is  no  career  for  great  genius 
by  popular  vote.  He  knew  the  country,  the  lim- 
itations of  his  power,  how  far  and  how  fast  the 
administration  could  go  in  the  great  struggle, 
better  than  the  cabinet,  or  Congress,  or  journalists, 
or  advisers.  "Call  for  troops  to  suppress  the 
rebellion,"  shouted  the  northern  press,  the  north- 
ern pulpit  and  the  representatives  in  Congress.  But 
he  said,  with  the  adoration  that  exists  for  the  con- 
stitution and  its  strict  interpretation,  and  for  the 
Union,  and  with  the  dread  there  is  of  its  dissolution, 
the  j3ag  must  be  assailed  before  a  response  can  be 
had.  Against  the  advice  of  every  member  of  his 
cabinet  he  said,  "Let  us  send  jDrovisions  to  the  be- 
leaguered United  States  soldiers  heroically  defend- 


10 

ing  the  flag  in  Cliarleston  Harbor.'"  The  unarined 
provision  ship  was  driven  back,  the  flag  tired  upon, 
the  fort  was  captured,  the  plain  people  who  were 
his  constituents  understood  then  the  situation,  and 
millions  of  soldiers  responded  to  his  call. 

Mr.  G-reeley  thundered  in  the  Tribune,  Mr.  Sum- 
ner in  the  Senate,  the  clergymen  in  their  jDulpits, 
and  the  orators  upon  the  platform,  that  he  should 
destroT  the  confederacv  at  once  bv  freeing  the 
slaves.  He  knew  as  no  other  man  did  the  strength 
and  power  of  the  feeling  which  had  grown  up  in 
the  countrv  of  the  sort  of  sacredness  that  hedged 
abont  property  in  slaves.  But  when  defeat  after 
defeat  came,  when  there  was  desx:»air  of  the  result, 
when  the  future  of  the  Republic  looked  dark, 
when  the  people  had  been  educated  to  regard 
the  Union  as  more  sacred  than  slavery,  then  he 
promulgated  his  immortal  proclamation.  Other 
Presidents  and  other  rulers  have  deemed  their  fall 
duty  performed  in  their  annual  communications 
to  their  congresses  or  their  parliaments,  but 
Lincoln  every  day  was  addressing  letters  by 
which  he  was  counseling  and  arguing  with 
the  people  upon  the  questions  of  the  hour,  the 
perils  of  the  country  and  the  duties  and  dangers 
that  were  before  him.  Xow  he  writes  to  Mr. 
Greeley,  now  to  the  workingmen  of  Manchester, 
now  to  the  workingmen  of  Xew  York,  now  to  a 
State  Convention,  now  to  a  convocation  of  clergy- 
men ;  but  always  to  the  people  of  the  United 
States.     Whenever  his  great  brain  and  his  great 


11 

heart  welled  np  so  that  he  seemed  about  to  be 
suflfocated  by  the  difficulties  of  the  situation,  aud 
by  the  impossibility  of  solvinsj  his  problems.  Lincoln 
poured  his  troubles  out  to  the  people  of  the  United 
States,  and  asked  for  their  sympathy,  their  advice 
and  their  support.  The  appeal  was  never  made  in 
Tain.  Politicians  raved  against  him,  and  said  that 
his  utterances  were  unwise,  and  his  actions  indis- 
creet. Earnest  men,  who  had  the  cause  at  lieart, 
called  conventions  to  prevent  his  renomination, 
and  then  to  defeat  him  for  re-election,  but  the 
plain  people  with  whom  he  had  been  talkinc:  as 
with  familiar  friends,  whose  homes  he  had  en- 
tered, at  whose  firesides  he  had  sat.  by  whose  bed- 
sides he  had  talked,  in  whose  inmost  circles  and  in 
the  midst  of  whose  family  prayers  he  had  been,  re- 
sponded with  an  overwhelming  support  whicli 
gave  him  again  the  presidency,  and  the  presidency 
by  practically  the  unanimous  voice  of  the  people. 

Lincoln  knew  nothing  of  the  dignity,  so  far  as 
it  is  expressed  in  manner  and  dress,  which  belongs 
to  high  station.  The  instinctive  sense  of  propriety 
and  consciousness  of  superiority  and  greatness 
which  hedged  Washington  was  absent  in  him.  In 
our  time,  in  the  fierce  light  of  our  publicity,  with 
the  scintillations  of  electricity  rendering  brilliant 
every  nook  and  corner  and  crannv  of  a  public 
man's  existence  and  thought,  the  temptations  to 
enlarge  the  wreath  whicli  the  people  place  upon 
his  head  are  almost  irresistible.  The  test  of 
greatness  is  the  wearing  of  the  halo.     Ic  destroyed 


12  J 

Napoleon, J  it  ruined  two-thirds  of  the  generals  in 
the  war,  it  has'driven  great  and  little  politicians, 
from  the  commencement  of  our  Republic  until 
now.  into  obscurity.  But  Lincoln  w^as  never 
troubled  as  to  the  size  of  his  head.  He  never  over- 
estimated nor  underestimated  who  he  was,  what 
he  was  nor  what  he  represented.  He  never  for- 
got w-here  he  came  from,  and  never  lost  sight 
of  the  fact  that  except  by  the  accident  of 
position  he  '  was  neither  better  nor  worse  than 
those  who  placed  him  in  the  Presidential  chair. 
He  possessed  what  no  other  ruler  ever  did,  or,  if  he 
did,  no  other  ruler  dared  to  use,  the  power  of  humor. 
The  portentous  solemnity  of  our  public  men  per- 
vades our  political  atmosphere,  even  to  depressing 
melancholy.  The  less  the  statesman  knows  the 
more  solemn  he  is,  the  thicker  his  head  the  more 
owlish  [his  bearing.  A  President  of  the  United 
States  once  said  to  me,  "  No  man  can  ever  succeed 
in  this  country  who  gives  rein  to  his  humor  or  his 
fun.  The  people  no  longer  look  upon  him  as  a 
serious  man,  and  only  serious  men  are  recognized  in 
the  consideration  of  public  affairs." 

When  Mr.  Lincoln  came  to  Washington  he  was 
unknown  to  the  great  leaders  of  the  party.  He  had 
the  courage,  which  only  a  very  great  man  can  have, 
of  summoning  them  all  into  his  Cabinet.  The  rule 
has  been  growing  to  summon  only  lesser  men  into 
the  Cabinet.  In  modern  times  as  soon  as  the  Presi- 
dent has  selected  his  constitutional  advisers  the 
whole  detective  agency  of  the  newspapers  is  set  to 


13 

work  to  find  oiit  who  they  are,  where  tliey  come 
from  and  what  the}'  have  done.  The  village  attor- 
ney, the  village  scribe,  the  local  philosopher  bound 
upon  the  national  platform  with  theories  as  broad 
as  their  environment,  and  as  useful.  The  j)rocess 
has  the  merit  of  elevating  the  chief  b}^  the  depre- 
ciation of  his  subordinates.  Lincoln  believed  in 
more  harmonious  pictures.  Napoleon,  surrounded 
bv  the  Marshals  of  France,  everv  one  of  them  a  hero 
of  a  great  battle,  every  one  of  them  the  demon- 
strated leader  of  a  mighty  army,  himself  the  ac- 
knowledged chief  and  leader  of  them  all,  formed  a 
picture  tliat  commanded  the  admiration  of  his  time 
and  has  arrested  the  attention  of  posterity.  This 
Illinois  lawyer,  orator  and  statesman,  called  to  his 
aid  the  men  who  had  demonstrated  in  the  Senate, 
in  the  House  and  in  the  Courts  that  they  were  the 
leaders  of  men.  What  a  spectacle  !  This  ungainly 
giant  of  the  west,  angular  and  awkward,  uncouth 
o£  manner,  inelegant  of  address,  with  the  courtly 
Seward  for  Secretary  of  State,  the  stately  Chase  for 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  the  worldly,  dominant 
and  shrewd  Cameron  for  Secretary  of  War,  and  the 
imperious  Stanton  as  his  successor  !  Chase  turns 
to  his  friends  and  intimates  that  the  country  has  a 
mountebank  for  President.  Seward,  ever  anxious  to 
be  useful,  w^rites  a  private  note  offering  to  perform 
all  the  duties  of  the  Presidency  and  leave  the  orna- 
ments  of  its  name  and  station  to  Lincoln.  He  re- 
ceives in  reply  a  letter  which  ignores  the  insult  but 
says  in  effect,  "I  will] run  the  administration  and 


14 

-I 

you  rim  your  department,  except  when  I  think  that 
you  had  better  run  it  in  some  other  way."  In  less 
than  a  year  everyone  of  those  great  leaders  recog- 
nized that  he  was  in  the  presence  of  his  chief  and 
superior. 

Lincoln  under  other  conditions  might  have  made 
a  great  playwright,  or  he  might  have  been  a  great 
actor.  He  was  unconciously  dramatic.  His  dis- 
a]3pearance  at  Harrisburg,  on  the  way  to  Washing- 
ton for  the  first  inauguration,  his  reai^pearance  at 
the  Capital  when  the  thugs  were  waiting  to  assas- 
sinate him,  was  a  dramatic  surprise  which  excited 
the  whole  country.  His  appointment  of  Hooker 
to  the  command  of  the  Army  of  the  Potomac,  in  a 
letter  which  told  him  plainly  his  weaknesses  and 
his  failures  and  the  reasons  why  he  ought  not  to 
have  the  responsibility  of  the  command  placed 
upon  him,  was  both  a  comedy  and  a  tragedy.  His 
offer  to  McClellan  to  borrow  his  army  if  he  only 
knew  what  to  do  with  it,  as  it  was  aj^parent 
McClellan  did  not  know,  was  one  of  those  strokes 
of  genius  in  expression  which  removed  the  i)opular 
idol  and  broke  it.  A  messenger  summoned  the 
cabinet  to  the  White  House,  The  first  to  enter 
was  the  stately,  the  dignified,  the  always  i^roper 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  Salmon  P.  Chase.  The 
President  looked  up  from  his  book  and  said,  "Mr. 
Chase,  I  was  just  reading  a  most  interesting  work, 
which  I  have  enjoyed  more  than  anything  I  have 
met  with  in  a  long  time.  Let  me  read  you  a  part 
of  it."     And  thereupon  he  began  reading  to  him 


15 

Artemus  Ward's  lecture  on  "  Wmx  Figgers."  The 
astonished  and  irritated  Secretary  of  the  Treas^^ry, 
listening  as  the  other  members  of  the  cabinet 
gathered,  indignantly  exclaimed,  "  Mr.  President, 
we  did  not  come  here  to  hear  this  idiotic  nonsense. 
For  what  are  we  snnrimoned?"  Mr.  Lincoln  pat 
his  hand  in  his  drawer,  pulled  out  a  paper  and 
said,  "Gen.tlemen,  I  summoned  you  to  submit  this 
paper  ;  not  to  ask  your  advice  as  to  whether  I 
should  issue  it  or  not,  because  I  intend  to  issue  it 
no  matter  what  your  advice  may  be  ;  but  to  ask  sug- 
gestions as  to  its  form."  And  he  read  to  them  the 
immortal  Proclamation  of  Emancipation  ;  the  docu- 
ment which  was  to  set  four  millions  of  human 
beings  free  ;  the  document  which  was  to  relieve  the 
Constitution  from  the  curse  of  slavery  ;  the  docu- 
ment which  was  to  make  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence for  the  first  time  in  our  history  the  vital 
force  in  the  principles  and  in  the  policies  of  the 
United  States  ;  the  document  which  was  to  remove 
the  stain  which  made  us  a  by- word  and  reproach 
among  all  civilized  people  ;  the  document  which 
carried  out  in  letter  and  spirit  the  vow  made  so 
many  years  before  when  the  flat-boatman  saw  the 
girl  sold  in  the  shambles  at  New  Orleans.  A  few 
suggestions  were  made,  a  few  hesitating  protests 
against  the  fierce  determination  of  the  President 
for  publication,  an  earnest  request  for  delay  until 
a  victory  should  come,  and  that  most  memorable  of 
Cabinet  meetings  in  the  history  of  the  United  States 
adjourned,  and  as  they  tiled  out  this  incomprehen- 


16 

sible  President  put  the  Proclamation  of  Emancipa- 
tion back  in  the  drawer  and  resumed  the  reading  of 
Artemus  AVard, 

I  remember  as  if  it  was  yesterday  an  afternoon 
with  Mr.  Lincoln.  I  was  but  a  boy,  though  Secre- 
tary of  Xew  York  State.  Horatio  Seymour  was 
the  Democratic  Governor,  and  the  Legislature  was 
Republican,  The  soldiers'  Tote  was  to  be  obtained. 
The  Republican  Legislature  would  not  trust  the 
Governor,  and  it  devolved  upon  me  the  duty  of 
collecting  the  soldiers'  vote.  Mr.  Lincoln  looked 
np  as  I  pressed  my  way  through  the  crowd  in  his 
reception  room  and  said  :  "  Well,  Depew,  what 
can  I  do  for  you  ? "  I  said  :  "  Mr,  President,  I  do 
not  want  anything  ;  I  am  in  TVashington  on  a 
mission  from  our  State  to  get  out  from  the  armies 
our  New  York  soldiers'  vote,  and  I  simply  called 
to  pay  my  respects."  He  said  :  "It  is  so  rare  that 
anyone  comes  here  who  wants  nothing,  please  wait 
and  I  will  get  rid  of  these  people  in  a  few  minutes." 
The  room  was  soon  emptied,  the  faithful  "  Jerry  " 
was  guarding  the  door,  and  on  the  lounge  the  tired 
President  was  rocking  to  and  fro,  holding  his  long 
knees  in  his  arms  and  telling  story  after  story  to 
relieve  his  mind,  and  he  said  :  "Depew,  they  say 
I  tell  a  great  many  stories.  I  think  I  do.  They 
sav  I  lower  the  dignitv  of  the  Presidential  office 
by  these  broad  anecdotes.  Possibly  that  is  true. 
But  I  have  found,  in  the  course  of  a  long  ex- 
perience, that  the  plain  people  of  the  country  take 
them  as  they  are,  and  are  more  easily  reached  and 


17 


influenced  and  argued  witli  througli  the  medium  of 
a  humorous  illustration  than  in  any  other  way." 

While  I  was  there  Mr.  John  Granson,  of  Buffalo, 
was  a  member  of  Congress,  His  face  and  his  head 
were  hairless  and  polished  like  a  billiard  ball.  He 
was  a  Democrat,  but  supjDorted  the  President.  The 
conditions  of  the  army  were  very  blue  in  the  East 
and  in  the  West.  Ganson  came  in  one  day  and 
said  :  "  Mr.  President,  I  am  risking  my  re-election 
in  supporting  your  war  measures.  The  campaign 
seems  very  unsatisfactory.  Of  course  I  will  not 
give  out  anything  you  tell  me.  What  is  the  situa- 
tion at  the  front  ?  "'  Mr.  Lincoln,  in  his  searching 
and  sad  way,  looked  at  him  for  a  moment  as  if  he 
was  about  to  reveal  the  secret  of  the  whole  army, 
and  then  tumbled  Ganson  out  of  the  reception  room 
by  saying,  ''  Ganson,  how  clean  you  shave."  Lord 
Lyons,  who  was  a  bachelor,  went  up  to  announce 
the  marriage  of  the  Princess  Alexandra.  As  is 
usual  on  such  occasions,  the  Secretary  of  State  had 
prepared  a  formal  reply  to  the  address  of  the  Eng- 
lish Minister.  Mr.  Lincoln  fumbled  in  his  pockets, 
and,  unable  to  tind  Mr.  Seward's  courtly  response, 
grasped  Lord  Lyons  cordially  by  the  hand  and  said, 
"  Lyons,  go  thou  and  do  likewise." 

As  I  sat  in  his  room  that  afternoon,  it  was  not 
Congressmen  who  crowded  about  him,  it  was  not 
Senators,  but  it  was  wives  and  mothers  who  wanted 
to  get  to  the  front,  and  whom  the  War  Department 
would  not  permit  to  go  where  their  loved  ones  lay 
wounded   in    the    hospitals.     It    was    wives    and 


IS 

mothers  and  fathers  pleading  for  husbands  and 
sons  condemned  to  be  shot.  Xo  petitioner  for 
mercy  ever  left  Lincoln  with  his  petition  not 
granted.  I  was  dining  one  night  with  General 
Sherman,  and,  except  Mr.  Choate  and  myself,  all 
the  gnests  were  commanders  of  armies  in  the  war. 
Thev  were  all  lamenting  how  Mr.  Lincoln  had  im- 
paired  discipline  by  i>ardoning  the  men  who  liad 
been  cotirt-martialed  and  condemned  to  be  shot,  and 
the  proceedings  of  the  court-martial  approved  by 
them,  and  finally  Slocnm  said,  ''Sherman,  what 
did  Toa  do*'"  That  stem  old  warrior  answered 
grimly,  **I  shot  them  first."  Bat  with  Mr.  Lincoln 
it  was  impossible  to  approve  a  death  warrant.  To 
the  father  pleading  for  his  son  he  gave  a  respite, 
and,  when  the  father  wanted  something  more,  bis 
answer  was.  "  If  yotir  boy  lives  till  that  sentence  is 
carried  out,  he  will  be  so  old  that  the  world 
will  think  Methnselah  was  a  baby  in  years  when 
he  died.""  On  his  first  visit  to  General  Grant's 
headquarters  the  driver  of  the  mules  was  arguing 
with  his  team  in  that  picturesque  fashion  which  the 
army  teamster  thinks  can  be  best  understood  by 
the  mule.  Mr.  Lincoln's  rebuke  of  the  blasphemy, 
which  he  detested,  was  unique.  " '  My  friend, ' '  said 
lie,  "'are  you  an  Episcopalian?"  "Xo,  Mr.  Presi- 
dent I  am  a  Methodist."'  "Oh!"  said  Mr.  Lin- 
cola,  ''I  thought  you  were  an  Episcopalian,  be- 
cause mv  Secretary  of  State.  Mr.  Seward,  some- 
times  talks  that  way,  and  he  is  a  warden  in  the 
Episcopal  Chtirch  in  Auburn." 


19 

It  is  significant  of  our  time  and  of  the  questions 
interesting  to  us,  as  we  celelebrate  the  birthday 
of  this  saviour  of  the  Republic,  this  foremost  of 
statesmen,  this  plainest  and  most  honest  of  mortals, 
this  most  dignified,  most  humorous,  most  serious, 
most  sad  of  men,  this  most  gentle  of  human  beings, 
this  leader  in  his  time,  and  of  all  time,  of  the  Re- 
publican party,  that  his  first  speech  was  for  a  pro- 
tective tariff.  He  was  first,  last  and  all  the  time  an 
American  ;  an  American  when  Xapoleon,  invading 
Mexico,  would  have  broken  up  the  Union,  an 
American  when  Great  Britain  would  have  inter- 
fered for  the  purpose  of  destroying  the  Republic — 
because,  as  Lord  Salisbury  said,  we  kept  shop  and 
were  her  rivals  in  business — an  American  in  his 
earnest  devotion  to  the  Union  and  the  Constitution, 
an  American  in  his  love  of  liberty,  an  American  in. 
his  belief  that  within  the  borders  of  the  United 
States  should  be  manufactured  all  that  the 
people  of  the  United  States  might  require  for 
themselves.  He  loved  the  Union  above  all 
things.  He  was  the  representative  of  the  cult 
which  was  started  by  Daniel  Webster.  The  world 
little  knows  what  it  owes  to  that  great  brain.  '  *  The 
Union,  one  and  inseparable,  now  and  forever"  was 
the  inspiration  of  the  schools.  It  created  a  mighty 
wave  of  unreasoning  worship  of  the  Union.  Lin- 
coln absorbed  it,  Lincoln  understood  it.  In  his  in- 
augural address — the  first  one — it  was  the  Union  ; 
in  his  inaugural  address — the  second  one— it  was 
the  Union,  in  all  his  letters  and  speeches  it  was  the 


20 

Union.  It  was  the  Union  with  slavery,  or  the 
Union  without  slavery,  but  always  the  Union  of 
the  States. 

We  cannot  pass  by  this  celebration,  ^^'e  cannot 
relegate  again  to  the  books  and  the  libraries 
this  heroic  and  majestic  figure  without  enforcing 
by  his  example  and  teachings  the  sentiment  of 
the  hour.  There  are  always  great  crises  coming 
periodically  in  the  history  of  nations.  It  was  the 
Revolutionary  War  which  gave  us  our  Republic. 
It  was  the  debates  with  Hayne  and  with  Douglas 
which  gave  us  the  love  of  union.  It  was  the 
Civil  War  which  ended  slavery,  and  now  it  is  the 
mighty  contest  of  industrial  forces,  of  economic 
principles,  of  the  proper  relations  of  the  currency 
and  the  credit  of  the  United  States  tc  its  trade 
and  credit  in  other  countries,  upon  which  are 
builded  our  hopes  or  our  fears.  We  have  had  a 
civil  war  in  which  no  blood  has  been  shed,  but 
there  have  been  more  desolated  homes,  more  closed 
industries,  more  sacrifices  of  property,  more  ruin 
and  misery  than  was  occasioned  by  the  war  from 
1861  to  1865.  This  has  been  caused  by  the  same 
forces,  springing  largely  from  the  same  territory, 
coming  largely  from  the  same  pale  of  intelligence 
and  motives  in  different  sections  as  that  which 
precipitated  the  great  struggle.  The  generation 
which  followed  the  Civil  War  knew  what  the  Dem- 
ocratic party  in  power  meant,  and  kept  it  in  the 
minority  for  a  quarter  of  a  century.  The  world  is 
fond  of  experiments,  and  experiments  run  in  cycles. 


•21 

What  has  been  will  be.  So,  after  thirty  years  we 
have  tried  the  Democratic  party  in  i)ower  once 
more.  We  gave  them  the  Presidency  and  Congress, 
and  we  have  had  repeated,  industrially  and  finan- 
ciall}',  the  experiences  of  the  Democratic  party  in 
power,  as  it  was  evidenced  in  their  rule  prior  to 
1860.  The  Democratic  party  stands  for  nothing 
national.  Its  principles  in  the  east  are  antagonistic 
to  its  principles  in  the  west.  Its  ideas  in  the  west 
are  hostile  to  its  ideas  in  the  south,  and  its  views  on 
the  Pacific  coast  have  no  relations  to  its  principles 
or  ideas  or  views  anywhere  else  in  the  country. 

Mr.  Lincoln  might  have  lived  and  added  to  his 
greatness  by  a  speedier  settlement  of  the  issues 
which  arose  out  of  the  Civil  War.  Mr.  Cleveland 
was  President  for  four  years  without  power,  and 
had  he  never  been  re-elected,  with  a  Democratic 
party  on  his  hands,  he  might,  with  the  halo  which 
was  thrown  around  him,  have  gone  down  to  poster- 
ity as  one  of  the  great  Presidents  of  the  country. 
But  Cleveland  was  re-elected  and  did  have  the 
Democratic  party  on  his  hands,  and  what  might 
have  been  is  not,  and  Cleveland  is  not  regarded  as 
one  of  the  great  Presidents  of  the  country. 

We  have  won  our  victory.  It  is  the  victory  of 
returning  common  sense,  the  victor}^  of  experience 
over  hope.  We  are  not  yet  out  of  the  woods.  The 
Republican  party  can  only  hold  the  country  where 
it  is  and  prevent  further  damage  until  it  assumes 
the  responsibilities  of  power.  The  ditiicnlt}^  with 
the  democracy  is  not  only  of  inex[)erience,  but  of  in- 


22 


-J 


competence.  The  evolution  of  the  student  is  first 
his  devotion  to  phrases,  and  the  more  vague  they 
mav  be  the  more  wise  they  seem,  and  from  the 
phrase  he  comes  to  theory.  The  theory  makes  him 
a  sceptic  in  religion  and  a  mugwump  in  politics. 
Then  he  either  settles  down  to  the  stern  renlities  of 
life  and  successful  solutions  of  his  problems,  or  he 
becomes  bankrupt  in  business  and  in  faith.  The 
Democratic  party  captured  the  country  by  the 
phrases  '*  free  raw  materials,"  "  the  tariff  is  a  tax," 
"  the  markets  of  the  world."  We  have  lost  the 
markets  of  the  world,  we  have  little  left  to  tax,  and 
our  raw  materials  and  manufactured  articles  and 
labor  are  all  free,  because  there  are  so  few  pur- 
chasers or  employers.  We  are  governed  by  the 
party  whicn  gave  us  the  Gorman  tariff,  which  has 
left  solvent  only  the  business  upon  ^vhicli  Repub- 
lican protection  is  continued,  the  party  which 
reversed  the  good  old  policy  that  you  should  pay 
your  debts  wath  money  which  you  earned,  and 
adoi^ted  the  new  one  of  paying  them  with  borrowed 
money.  Micawber  is  its  financial  authority.  That 
party  is  suspending  credit  by  the  eyelids  and  busi- 
Qess  by  the  hair  in  the  effort  to  solve  the  currency 
problem,  which  needs  little  better  solution  than  to 
leave  it  alone.  After  thousands  of  years  of  hopeless 
experiments  the  Democratic  leaders  are  still  striving 
to  square  the  circle  and  lift  one's  self  over  the  stone 
wall  by  the  straps  of  one's  boots;  they  are  still 
striving  to  pay  debts  without  assets  ;  still  striving 
to  give  money  where  none  has  been  earned  and  dis- 


23 

tribute  currency  where  there  is  no  property  to 
exchange  for  it ;  still  striving  to  give  value  to  the 
air  and  to  coin  and  mint  theories,  and  they  have  re- 
duced the  national  credit  so  that  the  Government 
has  to  j)ay  three  and  three-quarters  per  cent,  inter- 
est where  the  citizen  can  borrow  for  three  per  cent. 
Against  that  the  Republican  party  puts  in  prac- 
tice the  maxims  of  "Poor  Richard"  and  the 
principles  whirli  have  made  commercial  nations 
prosperous  and  commercial  peoples  ricli.  This  is 
not  the  time  nor  is  there  occasion  for 
despair.  The  hand  of  the  Republican  engineer  is 
on  the  throttle,  and  the  train  can  no  longer  run 
away.  The  conductor  can  stop  the  momentum  or 
side-track  the  cars,  but  the  engineer  will  not  let 
him  derail  them.  The  Republican  House  of  Rep- 
resentatives is  the  living  protest  of  the  country 
against  paralysis  and  despair,  and  it  will  hold  the 
fort  until  in  1896  the  relief  comes  and  the  country 
is  saved.  At  the  siege  of  Lucknow  a  handful  of 
soldiers  were  defending  their  own  lives  and  the  lives 
of  their  wives  and  little  ones  against  the  hordes  of 
Sepoys  about  them.  The  food  was  giving  out,  the 
hunger  belt  was  drawn  closer  ;  it  seemed  that  the 
day  of  relief  and  salvation  would  never  come. 
Suddenly  the  keen  ears  of  the  Scotch  woman  heard 
the  distant  bagpipes,  and  she  shouted:  "Dinna 
ye  hear  the  slogan  ?  It  is  Havelock  and  his  High- 
landers." "  Dinna  ve  hear  the  slogan  ?"  It  came 
in  the  last  election  and  gave  the  Republicans  the 
House  of   Representatives.     "Dinna  ye  hear  the 


24  -^ 

slogan?"  It  came  from  tlie  breaking  of  the  solid 
South.  "Dinna  ye  hear  the  slogan?"  It  came 
from  Missouri,  from  Maryland,  from  Tennessee, 
from  West  Virginia.  "Dinna  ye  hear  the  slo- 
gan?" It  is  the  marching  of  the  army  which 
answered  once,  "We  are  coming,  Father  Abra- 
ham, three  hundred  thousand  more,"  to  the  victory 
of  1896.  Then  the  Republican  Senate  will  respond 
to  the  Republican  House,  and  the  Republican 
House  will  respond  to  the  Republican  President, 
and  the  country  will  receive  prosperity,  happiness 
and  peace. 


ADDRESS 


OP 


Hon.  Cliaimcey  M.  Depew,  LLD., 


AT  THE 


COMMENCEMENT  EXERCISES  OF  THE  UNI- 
VERSITY OF  CHICAGO,  AT  THE 
AUDITORIUM, 

Monday   Evening,   April   1st,    18  9  5. 


THE  PRESENT,  ITS  OPPORTUNITIES 
AND  PERILS. 

Mr.  President,  Ladies  and  Gentlemen  : — 

In  the  career  of  a  young  man  are  several 
climacterics.  They  are  well  defined  and  in- 
tensely interesting  if  he  has  the  advantages  of  a 
liberal  education.  Broadly  stated  they  are  his 
entering  college,  the  day  of  his  graduation,  the 
career  he  adopts  and  his  marriage.  His  gradu- 
ation day  and  the  selection  of  his  career  come 
so  close  together  that  they  may  almost  be  ac- 
cepted as  one.  His  university  and  the  learned 
faculty  have  equipped  and  trained  him  for  his 
life  work.  His  reliance  thereafter  is  upon  him- 
self.     He  leaves  college  and   enters  the  world 


26 


-J 


under  poetic,  even  romantic  conditions.  His 
situation  is  like  that  of  the  knight  in  the  ancient 
tournament  whose  valor  and  skill  were  witnessed 
by  throngs  of  gallant  gentlemen  and  beautiful 
ladies,  and  who,  if  successful,  had  the  supreme 
happiness  of  crowning  some  one  as  the  queen  of 
love  and  beauty.  As  this  modern  knight  of  the 
college  curriculum  stands  upon  the  commence- 
ment platform  he  is  surrounded  by  admiring 
relatives,  by  happy  and  sympathetic  friends  and 
a  joyous  and  applauding  multitude. 

The  entrance  of  a  young  man  into  the  world 
is  commonly  described  in  the  vocabulary  of  the 
literature  of  the  battle-field,  but  that  characteri- 
zation is  wholly  inadequate.  Not  only  is  it  in- 
adequate, but  it  is  untrue.  The  ambitious  aspir- 
ant for  the  rewards  and  honors  of  life  does  not 
expect  to  win  them  by  the  defeat  and  destruc- 
tion of  his  competitors.  Blood  and  treasure  are 
not  poured  out  in  a  successful  career  in  litera- 
ture, the  professions  or  business.  It  is  an  igno- 
ble and  a  mean  view  which  relies  upon  the  ruin 
of  an  opponent  in  order  to  secure  his  place. 
Success  in  life,  with  all  its  hot  competitions,  is 
rather  a  contest  like  some  of  the  games  of 
Olympia  and  some  of  the  athletic  feats  of  our 
own  times  in  which    the    swifter   runner  or    the 


27 

more  skillful  oarsman  may  win  the  prize,  but 
there  are  honors  and  cheers,  there  are  places  and 
rewards  for  those  who  fail  In  securing  the  su- 
preme positions.  Of  course  we  know  of  fortunes 
which  have  been  made  by  the  misfortunes  of 
others  and  positions  which  have  been  won  by 
the  overthrow  of  others,  but  the  man  whose  ac- 
cumulations, however  great  and  glittering  they 
may  be,  represent  simply  the  ruin  of  tens,  or 
hundreds,  or  thousands  is  nothing  but  a  legal- 
ized brieand.  It  is  the  misfortune  of  our  com- 
plex  civilization  that  the  law  has  not  compre- 
hended and  covered  in  its  prohibitions  and  pen- 
alties all  the  opportunities  of  sinning  against  the 
persons  and  properties  of  a  community. 

It  is  not  the  least  of  the  glories  of  our  period 
that  a  liberal  education  has  become  popular  and 
the  university  the  ambition  of  all  the  people. 
For  nearly  a  thousand  years  the  university  was 
only  for  the  select  few.  The  plain  people  had 
no  lot  or  part  or  Interest  or  opportunity  in  Its 
advantaofes.  The  medieval  foundation  which  Is 
the  ancestor  of  the  modern  college  was  only  for 
the  benefit  of  a  fraction  of  the  population. 
Originally  it  was  only  for  the  church.  It 
took  centuries  to  embrace  In  a  liberal  education 
what  are  known  as  the  professions.      It  is  only 


28  ~J 

in  our  own  time  and  in  America  tliat  journalism 
has  been  recognized  as  one  of  the  Hberal  profes- 
sions. There  is  nothing  so  conservative  as  the 
college.  It  follows  last  in  the  procession  of 
progress  ;  it  distrusts  innovations  and  discredits 
theories.  Its  faculty  by  the  very  peculiarity  of 
their  existence  learn  to  respect  the  traditions 
and  the  teachings  of  the  past.  They  point  to 
the  long  line  of  men,  eminent  in  every  depart- 
ment of  human  thought  and  activity,  whom  the 
colleges  have  created,  and  they  naturally  inquire 
most  critically  into  the  innovation  which  prom- 
ises to  improve  upon  the  Abelards  and  the 
Bacons,  upon  the  Miltons  and  the  hundreds  of 
others  who  have  illumined  literature  ;  upon  the 
innumerable  line  of  statesmen  and  orators  and 
the  grand  body  of  preachers  and  thinkers.  The 
university  in  Europe  has_]]about  it  the  medieval 
flavor.  It  is  not  a  school  of  the  people.  It  is 
still  an  institution  for  classes  and  not  for  the 
masses.  Its  training  and  its  objects  are  for  the 
professions,  the  sciences,  literature  and  heredi- 
tary statesmanship.  It  is  the  American  devel- 
opment which  has  brought  the  college  home  to 
the  people.  Harvard  and  Yale,  the  parents  of 
all  the  American  colleges,  were  founded  origi- 
nally simply  to  educate  men  for  the  pulpit.      It 


29 

is  a  curious  fact  that  for  a  hundred  years  after 
the  landing  of  the  Pilgrims  on  Plymouth  Rock 
there  was  not  a  lawyer  in  New  England.  In 
every  community  the  minister  was  not  only  the 
pastor  of  his  flock,  the  curator  of  souls  and  the 
administrator  of  the  church,  but  he  was  also  the 
authority  in  political  matters  and  the  judge  in 
neighborhood  disputes.  His  sacred  office,  his 
education  and  his  superior  training  made  him 
the  leader  of  the  people  in  all  matters  affecting 
their  relations  with  each  other  or  with  their 
God.  There  are  nearly  four  hundred  colleges 
in  the  United  States  to-day  and  their  number 
evidences  the  aspirations  of  the  farm  and  the 
workshop  for  a  higher  education  for  their  boys 
and  their  girls.  This  rapid  evolution  of  the  uni- 
versity toward  popular  ideas  and  popular  bases 
In  our  country  has  made  acute  the  question 
whether  our  education  should  be  specifically  for 
the  pursuit  which  the  student  has  selected  as  his 
vocation,  or  whether  upon  ancient  and  tried 
lines  it  should  develop  himi  first  by  discipline, 
by  training,  and  by  teaching  to  the  full  growth 
and  command  of  all  his  faculties,  and  then  let 
him  select  his  pursuit. 

I  acknowledge  the  position  and  the  usefulness 
of  the    business    college,    the    manual    training 


30 


-J 


school,  the  technological  institute,  the  scientific 
schools  and  the  schools  of  mines,  medicine,  law 
and  theology.  They  are  of  infinite  importance 
to  the  youth  who  has  not  the  money,  the  time, 
or  the  opportunity  to  secure  a  lil^eral  education. 
They  are  of  equal  benefit  to  the  college  gradu- 
ate who  has  had  a  liberal  education  in  training 
him  for  his  selected  pursuit.  But  the  theorists, 
or  rather  the  practical  men  who  are  the  archi- 
tects of  their  own  fortunes,  and  who  are  pro- 
claiming on  every  occasion  that  a  liberal  educa- 
tion is  a  waste  of  time  for  a  business  man,  and 
that  the  boy  who  starts  early  and  is  trained 
only  for  his  one  pursuit  is  destined  for  a  larger 
success,  are  doing  infinite  harm  to  the  ambitious 
youth  of  this  country. 

It  has  been  my  lot  in  the  peculiar  position 
which  I  have  occupied  for  over  a  quarter  of  a 
century  of  counsel  and  adviser  for  a  great  cor- 
poration and  its  creators,  and  of  the  many  suc- 
cessful men  in  business  who  have  surrounded 
them,  to  know  how  men  who  had  been  denied 
in  their  youth  the  opportunities  for  education 
feel  when  they  are  possessed  of  fortunes  and 
the  world  seems  at  their  feet.  Then  they  pain- 
fully recognize  their  limitations  ;  then  they 
know  their  weakness  ;  then  they  understand  that 


31 

there  are  things  which  money  cannot  buy,  and 
that  there  are  gratifications  and  triumphs  which 
no  fortune  can  secure.  The  one  lament  of  all 
those  men  has  been  "  Oh,  if  I  had  been  educated  ! 
I  would  sacrifice  all  that  I  have  to  attain 
the  opportunities  of  the  college  ;  to  be  able  to 
sustain  not  only  conversation  and  discussion 
"w^th  the  educated  men  with  whom  I  come  in 
contact,  but  competent  also  to  enjoy  what  I  see 
is  a  delight  to  them  beyond  anything  which  I 
know." 

The  college,  in  its  four  years  of  dicipline, 
training,  teaching  and  development  makes  the 
boy  the  man.  His  Latin  and  his  Greek,  his 
rhetoric  and  his  logic,  his  science  and  his  phil- 
osophy, his  mathematics  and  his  history  have 
little  or  nothino^  to  do  with  law  or  medicine  or 
theology,  and  still  less  to  do  with  manufacturing, 
or  mining,  or  storekeeping,  or  stocks,  or  grain 
or  provisions.  But  they  have  given  to  the  youth 
when  he  has  graduated,  the  command  of  that 
superb  intelligence  with  which  God  has  endowed 
him,  by  which  for  the  purpose  of  a  living  or 
a  fortune,  he  grasps  his  profession  or  his 
business  and  speedily  overtakes  the  boy  who, 
abandoning  college  opportunities,  gave  his  nar- 
row Hfe   to   the  narrowing   pursuit  of  the   one 


32  ~J 

thing  by  which  he  expected  to  earn  a  living.  The 
college-bred  man  has  an  equal  opportunity  for 
bread  and  butter,  but  beyond  that  he  becomes  a 
citizen  of  commanding  influence  and  a  leader 
in  every  community  where  he  settles.  Within 
his  home,  however  humble  it  may  be  and  how- 
ever limited  his  income  to  support  it,  he  has 
enjoyment  among  his  books  and  in  the  grasp 
and  discussion  of  the  questions  of  the  hour, 
which  are  denied  to  the  man  who  has  not  drunk 
at  or  who  refused  to  go  to  the  fountain  of 
knowledge  and  the  well-spring  of  inspiration 
which  flows  only  in  the  college  or  the  university. 
The  best  proof  of  the  value  of  a  college 
education  in  all  the  pursuits  of  life  is  to  be 
found  in  the  eminent  success  of  those  who  have 
enjoyed  it  in  the  higher  v;alks  of  the  profes- 
sions, of  statesmanship  and  even  in  business. 
As  de  Tocqueville  pointed  out  and  as  Bryce  has 
discovered,  ours'  is  a  lav/yers'  government.  The 
vast  majority  of  our  Presidents,  our  Cabinet 
Ministers,  of  the  members  of  our  House  of  Rep- 
resentatives and  of  the  Senate  have  been  law- 
yers. The  reason  has  not  been  because  the 
lawyers  are  better  fitted  to  make  laws  or  to 
legislate  than  the  farmer  or  the  business  man, 
but  because  the  lawyers  have  been  better  trained 


33 

from  having  been  in  the  past  almost  universally 
educated  at  the  college.  The  legislation  of  the 
Parliament  of  Great  Britain  during  the  past  fifty 
years  has  been  as  liberal  and  as  advanced  as 
that  of  any  government  in  the  world.  It  has 
been  a  constant  succession  of  measures  for  the 
emancipation  of  the  sufferage,  the  emancipation 
of  trade,  and  the  emancipation,  upon  philan- 
thropic lines,  from  the  penal  laws  which  repre- 
sented the  barbarism  of  the  Middle  Ages. 
Very  few  of  the  members  of  Parliament 
have  been  lawyers,  but  ninety  one-hundreths 
of  the  members  were  graduates  of  the  great 
universities  of  Great  Britain,  and  there  they 
secured  that  university  training  which  gave 
to  them  that  broadness  of  understanding, 
that  fullness  of  grasp,  that  touch  with  the 
questions  of  the  hour,  that  knowledge  of  the 
present  and  of  the  past,  and  insight  into  the 
future  which  made  them  the  statesmen  of  the 
British  Empire. 

The  world  which  our' young  man  enters  to- 
day is  a  very  different  one  from  that  which  his 
father  or  his  grandfather  or  his  ancestor  of  a 
hundred  years  ago  knew  anything  about.  Fifty 
years  ago  he  would  have  graduated  at  a  denom- 
inational college  and  fallen  into  the  church  of 


34 

-J 


his  fathers  and  of  his  faculty.  Fifty  years  ago 
he  would  have  dropped  into  the  party  to  \vhich 
his  father  belonged.  He  would  have  accepted 
his  religious  creed  from  the  village  pastor  and 
his  political  principles  from  the  national  platform 
of  his  father's  party.  But  to-day  he  graduates 
at  a  college  where  the  denominational  line  is  loose- 
ly drawn,  and  finds  that  the  members  of  his  fam- 
ily have  drifted  into  all  churches  and  are  profess- 
ing all  creeds,  and  he  must  select  for  himself  the 
church  in  which  he  shall  find  his  home,  and  the 
doctrines  upon  which  he  shall  base  his  faith. 
He  discovers  that  the  ties  of  party  have  been 
loosened  by  false  leaders  or  incompetent 
ones,  and  by  the  failure  of  party  organizations 
to  meet  the  exigencies  of  the  country  and  the 
demands  of  the  tremendous  development  of  the 
tim^es.  Those  who  should  be  his  advisers  say  to 
him,  "  Son,  judge  for  thyself  and  for  thy  country." 
Thus  at  the  ver}-  threshold  he  requires  an  equip- 
ment which  his  father  did  not  need  for  his  du 
ties  as  a  citizen  or  for  the  foundations  of  his 
faith  and  principles.  He  starts  out  at  the  close 
of  this  marvelous  nineteenth  century  to  be  told 
from  the  pulpit  and  the  platform  and  by  the 
press,  and  to  see  from  his  own  observations 
that  there  are  revolutionary  conditions    in  the 


35 

political,  the  financial  and  the  industrial  world 
which  threaten  the  stability  of  the  state,  the  po- 
sition of  the  church,  the  foundations  of  society 
and  the  safety  of  property.  But  while  precept 
and  prophesy  are  of  disaster  he  should  not  de- 
spair. Every  young  man  should  be  an  optimist. 
Every  young  man  should  believe  that  to-morrow 
Avill  be  better  than  to-day  and  look  forward  with 
unfaltering  hope  for  the  morrow,  while  doing 
his  full  duty  for  to-day. 

That  the  problems  are  difficult,  and  the  situa- 
tion acute,  we  all  admit.  But  it  is  the  province 
of  education  to  solve  problems  and  remove  acute 
conditions.  Our  period  is  the  paradox  of  civil- 
ization. Heretofore  our  course  has  been  a  mat- 
ter of  easy  interpretation  and  plain  sailing  by 
the  navigation  books  of  the  past.  But  we  stand 
five  years  from  the  twentieth  century  facing 
conditions  which  are  almost  as  novel  as  if  a  vast 
convulsion  had  hurled  us  through  space  and  we 
found  ourselves  sittino^  beside  one  of  the  canals 
of   Mars. 

Steam  and  electricity  have  made  the  centu- 
ries of  the  Christian  era  down  to  ours 
count  for  nothing.  They  have  brought 
about  a  unity  of  production  and  markets 
which    upset     all      the     calculations      and    all 


36  -' 

the  principles  of  action  of  the  past.  They 
have  united  the-  world  in  an  instantaneous 
communication  which  has  overthrown  the  limi- 
tations which  formerly  were  controlled  by  time 
and  distance  or  could  be  fixed  by  legislation. 
The  prices  of  cotton  on  the  Ganges  or  the  Ama- 
zon, of  wheat  on  the  plateaus  of  the  Himalayas 
or  in  the  delta  of  the  Nile,  or  in  the  Argentines, 
of  this  morning,  with  all  the  factors  of  currency 
of  climate  and  wages  which  control  the  cost  of 
their  production,  are  instantly  reflected  at  noon 
at  Liverpool,  at  New  Orleans,  at  Savannah,  at 
Mobile,  at  Chicago  and  at  New  York.  They 
send  a  thrill  or  a  chill  through  the  plantations 
of  the  South  and  the  farm-houses  of  the  West. 
The  farmers  of  Europe  and  America  are  justly 
complaining  of  their  conditions.  The  rural  popu- 
lations are  rushing  to  the  cities  and  infinitely  in- 
creasing the  difficulties  of  municipal  government. 
Capitalists  are  striving  to  form  combinations 
whichjshall  float  with  the  tide  or  stem  it,  and  labor 
organizations  with  limited  success  are  endeavor- 
ing to  create  a  situation  which  they  believe  will 
be  best  for  themselves.  The  tremenduous  pro- 
gress of  the  last  fifty  years,  the  revolutions 
which  have  been  worked  by  steam,  electricity 
and  invention,  the  correlation  of  forces  working 


37 

on  one  side  of  the  globe  and  producing  instan- 
taneous effects  upon  the  other,  have  so  changed 
the  relations  of  peoples  and  industries  that 
the  world  has  not  yet  adjusted  itself  to  them. 
The  reliance  of  the  present  and  future  must  be 
upon  education,  so  that  supreme  intelligence  may 
bring  order  out  of  the  chaos  produced  by  this 
nineteenth  century  earthquake  of  opportunities 
and  powers. 

There  have  always  been  crises  in  the  world. 
They  have  been  the  efforts  and  aspirations  of 
mankind  for  somethinor  better  and  higher,  and 
have  ultimately  culminated  in  some  tremendous 
movement  for  liberty.  These  revolutions  have 
been  attended  by  infinite  suffering,  the  slaughter 
of  millio'ns  and  the  devastation  of  provinces  and 
kingdoms.  The  crusades  lifted  Europe  out  of 
the  slavery  of  feudalism,  the  French  Revolution 
broke  the  bonds  of  caste.  Napoleon  was  the 
leader  and  wonder  worker,  though  selfishly  so,  of 
modern  universal  suffrage  and  parliamentary 
government.  The  aspiration  of  all  the  centuries 
has  been  for  liberty  and  more  liberty.  The  expec- 
tation has  been,  that  when  liberty  was  gained 
there  would  be  universal  happiness  and  peace. 
The  English  speaking  peoples  have  secured 
liberty    in    its    largest   and    fullest    sense ;  that 


38 

liberty  where  the  people  are  their  own  govern- 
ors, legislators  and  masters.  The  paradox  of 
it  all  is  that  with  the  liberty  which  we  all  hold 
as  our  greatest  blessing  has  come  a  discontent 
greater  than  the  world  has  ever  known.  The 
socialist  movement  in  Germany  grows  from  a 
hundred  thousand  votes  ten  years  ago  to  some 
millions  in  1894.  The  Republican  elements  in 
France  become  more  radical  and  threateninor 
month  by  month.  The  agrarian  and  labor 
troubles  of  Great  Britain  are  beyond  any  ability 
of  her  statesman  to  overcome  except  by  make- 
shifts from  day  to  day.  There  was  an  anarchist 
riot  in  Chicago,  when  only  the  disciplined  valor 
of  a  small  corps  of  policemen  saved  the  great 
city  from  the  horrors  of  pillage  and  the  sack. 
A  single  man  created  an  organization  of  railway 
employees  in  a  few  months  so  strong  that  under 
his  order  tvv^enty  millions  of  people  were  paralyzed 
in  their  industries,  and  their  movements,  and  all 
the  elements  which  constitute  the  support  of  com- 
munities temporarily  suspended.  So  potential 
was  this  uprising  that  two  governors  surrendered 
and  the  mayor  of  one  of  our  Western  Metropolis 
took  his  orders  from  the  leader  of  the  revolt. 
Industrial  and  commercial  losses  of  incalculable 
extent  were  averted  only  by  the  strong  arm  of 
the   Federal   Government. 


39 

A  Congress  which  has  just  adjourned  nominally 
represented  several  parties,  but  recognized  allegi- 
ance to  none,  and  its  ignorance  and  incom- 
petence were  the  wonder  of  the  world  and  the 
amazement  of  the  country.  Its  idiocy  nearly 
wrecked  the  credit  and  business  of  the  country. 
It  could  formulate  no  policy,  nor  devise  any 
scheme  of  relief.  Each  of  its  little  groups  had  its 
pet  theories  and  plans.  Its  faults  and  failures  were 
due  to  ignorance.  There  was  not  enough  of 
educated  intelligence  to  concentrate  upon  meas- 
ures which  could  start  once  more  the  wheels 
of  industry  and  give  profitable  employment  on 
the  farms,  and  in  the  factories,  the  mines  and  the 
railroads.  The  times  are  ripe  for  ignorant  dema- 
gogues and  educated  patriots,  and  our  colleges 
are  the  recruiting  stations  for  the  patriots.  All 
these  are  not  revolutions.  They  are  symptoms  ; 
symptoms  of  conditions  which  must  be  grasped, 
understood,  met  and  solved.  We  need  fear 
no  revolution,  because  revolution  only  comes, 
as  it  has  in  the  past,  when  there  is  an  under  and 
oppressed  class  seeking  to  break  the  crust  of 
caste  or  privilege.  We  have  no  caste  or  priv- 
ilege. The  people  who  are  discontented  are 
the  eovernors  and  rulers  and  must  solve  their 
own  problems.     They  can  elect  their  own  Con- 


40 

grasses  and  presidents.  They  cannot  revolt 
ao^ainst  themselves  nor  cut  their  own  tliroats. 
Sooner  or  later  and  in  some  way  or  other  they 
will  solve  their  problems,  but  it  will  be  by  and 
through  the  law.  It  will  be  bv  destructive  or 
constructive  methods. 

The  inquiry  is  natural.  •"  With  all  the  pros- 
perity and  progress  of  the  world;  why  this  dis- 
content?" The  rapidity  of  invention  and  the 
opportunities  afforded  by  electricity  and  steam 
have  destroyed  in  the  last  twenty-five  years 
sixty  per  cent,  of  the  capital  of  the  world  and 
thrown  forty  per  cent,  of  its  labor  out  of  employ- 
ment. The  triple  expansion  engine,  the  inven- 
tion of  a  new  motor,  the  reduplication  of  forces 
by  a  new  application  of  m.achiner}*  makes  use- 
less all  the  old  ones.  It  does  more,  it  compels 
the  skilled  artisan,  in  the  loss  of  the  tool  by  which 
he  earned  his  living,  and  v/hich  is  no  longer  of 
any  use,  to  fall  back  into  the  vast  mass  of  com- 
mon laborers.  At  the  same  time  these  very 
forces  which  have  thus  destroyed  the  majority 
of  values  and  thrown  out  of  employment  so 
many  people,  have  created  new  conditions  which 
have  added  beyond  the  power  of  calculation  to 
the  wealth  of  the  world  and  the  opportunities 
of  its  people  for  living,  comfort  and  happiness. 


41 

But  to  enjoy  its  opportunities,  its  comfort  and 
its  happiness  a  better  education  becomes  neces- 
sar\-. 

Another  of  the  Paradoxes  of  our  quarter  of 
a  centur\*  is  that  ever\*  artisan  and  mechanic 
and  the  laborer  in  ever}-  department  tcniay,  with 
shorter  hours  of  labor,  receives  twent\--five  per 
cent,  and  in  many  cases  fifty  per  cent  more  than 
he  did  thirtv  vears  aofo.  While  he  recei.  ts 
thus  one  third  more  than  he  did  thirt\-  years 
aofo.  his  dollar  will  buv  in  clothes  and  food 
twice  as  much  as  it  would  thirty  years  ago. 
One  would  think  that  the  laborer  ought  to  be 
supremely  happy  when  he  compares  the  past 
with  the  present,  and  that  beyond  his  living  he 
ought  to  be  laying  up  in  the  savings  bank  the 
fund  which  would  speedily  make  him  a  capita- 
list. And  yet  he  feels  a  discontent  which  his 
father  thirty  years  ago  with  one-third  the  wages 
and  his  dollar  buvinof  onlv  half  as  ~-ich.  never 
knew.     This  all  comes  of  education. 

Education  has  made  possible  the  mar\-elous 
gTO\\-th  of  our  countn,-.  and  the  wonderful  op- 
portunity it  affords  for  employment  and  fortunes, 
but  it  has  lifted  our  people  out  of  the  methods 
and  habits  of  the  past,  and  we  can  no  longer 
live  as  our  fathers  did. 


-J 
42 

The  common  school  and  the  hiorh  school,  with 
their  superior  advantages,  have  cultivated  us  so 
that  the  refinements  of  life  make  broader  and 
more  intelligent  men  and  brighter,  more  beauti- 
ful and  more  large  souled  women.  It  lifts  them 
above  the  plane  of  the  European  peasant. 
While  education  and  liberty  have  made  Ameri- 
cans a  phenomenal  people,  they  have  also,  in  a 
measure,  raised  the  standards  of  living  and  its 
demands  in  the  older  countries  of  Europe.  The 
Indian  laborer  can  live  under  a  thatch  in  a 
single  room  with  breech  clout  for  clothes  and  a 
pan  of  rice  for  his  food.  But  the  American 
mechanic  wants  his  home  with  its  several  rooms. 
He  has  learned,  and  his  children  have  learned, 
the  value  of  works  of  art.  They  have  all 
become  familiar  with  the  better  food  and  die 
better  clothino:  and  the  better  life  v/hich  con- 
stitute  not  luxury  but  comfort  and  which  maices 
up  and  ought  to  make  up  the  citizens  of  our 
Republic. 

Masterful  men  of  orreat  foresisfht  and  courao-e 
have  seized  upon  the  American  opportunity  to 
accumulate  vast  fortunes.  The  masses  who 
have  not  been  equally  fortunate  look  upon  them 
and  say  "  we  have  not  an  equal  share  in  these 
opportunities."     This  is  not  the  place  nor  have  I 


43 

time  to  even  hint  at  the  solution  of  these  diffi- 
culties, or  the  solving  of  these  problems.  That 
the  Pfenius  exists  amonor  ^s  to  meet  them  if  need 
be  by  legislation,  if  need  be  by  other  processes 
no  man  in  his  senses  can  doubt.  We  require 
for  our  time  more  education,  more  college 
students,  and  more  college  opportunities. 
Every  young  man  who  goes  out  from  these 
foundations  into  the  world  goes  out  as  a  mis- 
sionary of  light  and  knowledge.  He  will  stand 
in  the  community  where  he  will  settle  for  an 
intelligent,  broad  and  patriotic  appreciation  of 
the  situation  of  the  country  and  in  his  neighbor- 
hood. The  graduates  of  the  four  hundred  Uni- 
versities  of  the  country  are  the  lieutenants  and 
the  captains,  the  colonels  the  brigadier  generals 
and  the  major  generals  of  that  army  of  Ameri- 
can progress  to  which  we  all  belong.  We  are 
fighting  the  battles  not  only  of  to-day  but  for 
all  times  ;  we  are  developing  this  country  not 
only  for  ourselves  but  also  for  posterity.  We 
have  overcome  slavery,  we  have  extirpated 
polygamy  and  our  only  remaining  enemy  is  ig- 
norance. 

The  best  use  to  which  wealth  can  be  applied 
is  to  assist  these  sfreat  universities  which  are 
thus  educating  the  youth  of  our  land. 


?S"This  institution  which  owes  its  existence  to 
the'benehcence  of  Rockefeller  is  in  itself  a  monu- 
ment of  the  proper  use  of  wealth  accumulated 
bv  a  man  of  genius.  So  is  Cornell,  so  is 
Vanderbilt,  and  so  are  the  older  colleges,  as 
they  have  received  the  benefactions  of  generous, 
appreciative  and  patriotic  v>-ealth.  But  in  view 
of  the  dangers  which  are  about  us  and  of  the 
difficulties  which  are  before  us  we  cannot 
rely  alone  upon  what  the  rich  may  do  or  v.-hat 
philanthropy,  or  generosity  or  wisdom  may  sug- 
gest. The  State  has  already  done  well  in  the 
common  school ;  it  has  done  better  in  the  high 
school,  and  better  still  in  the  final  opportunity 
which  it  eives  in  manv  cases  for  a  liberal  educa- 
tion. 

It  would  be  a  long  step  forw^ard  in  populariz- 
inor  hiofher  education  if  the  Government  should 
establish  at  Washington  a  great  National  Uni- 
versitv'.  As  at  Oxford  or  at  Cambridge  there 
are  historic  colleges  with  foundations  running 
back  for  hundreds  of  years,  and  each  having  its 
own  traditions,  but  all  part  of  the  University, 
so  in  ever}'  state  there  would  be  colleges, 
each  one  of  them  having  its  own  merits  and 
traditions  and  all  of  them  belonging  to  the 
Grand  University  which  will  represent  the  cul- 
ture of  the  new  world,  the  University  of  the 
United  States. 


ADDRE 


OF 


Hon.  Chauncev  M.  Dere^.  LL.  D. 


At  His  Birthday  Dixxej.    ^zm^--^_ 

Him  by 

The  Montaui;  Club,  of  IriikljD, 

SATTHrAY  Z--zv:n3.  A??:l  20-h,  1895. 


Marvelloiis  in  irsir/-l2f-5       '  -"'i-?  :?~  --  :''f 
spirit  of  good-fellowship  wJiiiuJa  5  lif-i 

cey  M.  Depew  at  his  sixt Y-fiist   :         .  . ^  I: ii r :  i: 
the  Moniaak  Club,  in  Brooklyn,  1  -    :  _  A  ~  5 

a  memonhle  night  to  erery  i 

Mr.  Depew's  speech  wasa  tr:  ~  s 

strong  and  resonant,  and  Ms  words  i: 

ears.  Ir  was  10  o'clock  before  diL  r  ^  —  at 
every  plate  was  a  Ing  peadu  and  Mr.  Depe^  - 
as  he  saw  them.  Befejre  President  C-  —  A. 
Moore,  of  the  cluK  introdnced  Siepken  A.  Gris- 
wold.  who  in  turn  introduced  Mr.  Bepew.  six 
'*bK>wnies  '*  bearing  a  peach-tree  well  loaded  with 
fmit  came  in  and  deposited  !r  ir.  fr.nT  :f  Mr. 
Depew. 


46 

Mr.  Depew,  in  responding  to  an  address  of  wel- 
come by  ex-Senator  Griswold,  spoke  as  follows  : 

Mr.  Pkesidext  and  G-extlemen  :  On  the  23d  of 
April   Shakespeare,    St.   George  and   m\'self  were 
born,  and   I   am  the  only  survivor.     It  is  hardly 
a    case    of    the    survival     of     the    fittest.       This 
annual  compliment  which  you  pay  tne  is  highly  ap- 
preciated and  valued.     There  is  always  somewhere, 
however,  either  a  ily  or  the  remains  of  one  in  tlie 
purest  amber.     In  my  case  it  is  the  necessity  on 
these  recurring  anniversaries  to  make  a  speech  to 
substantially  the  same  three  or  four  hundred  gen- 
tlemen who  honor  me,  when  the  only  subject  before 
the   house  is  the  person  whose   birthday  is  cele- 
brated.    As  he  is  forbidden  by  every  rule  to  talk  of 
himself,  how  shall  he  meet  this  annual  obligation  ? 
He  is  in  serious  danger  of  having  the  guests  cry 
out,  as   one  of  them  did  at  a  hotel  where  I  was 
recently  in  the  South,  who,  after  the  tenth  day.  as 
the  evening  banquet   closed,  remarked  in   a   loud 
voice   (I   do  not  know  that  I  get  his   chapter  and 
verse  correctly),  "Hebrews  xiii,  2."  The  indignant 
landlady  after  awMle  said  to  him  :   "  Sir,  some  of 
the  best  families  which  I  have  in  my  hotel  are  Jews, 
and  thev  are  hart  at  this  reference  to  them."     He 
replied  :  "  Madam,  I  did  not  refer  to  them.  It  was 
simply  a  tribute  to  your  daily  dinner  which  I  in- 
tended to  convey  by  quoting  a  verse  which  reads, 
*  The  same  yesterday,  to  day  and  forever.'  " 
There  is  represented  here  every  profession  and 


47 

business  of  our  American  life.  The  cleigyraan,  tlie 
lawyer,  the  doctor,  the  man  of  affairs  and  the  man 
of  literature  sit  ro-niojht  within  the  hospitable  walls 
of  this  most  hospitable  of  clubs.  The  year  since 
we  last  met  has  been  so  significant  of  events  of  mo- 
ment to  the  well-being  of  the  State  and  society  that 
they  impress  the  lesson  of  progress  and  cheer  the 
heart  of  the  optimist  by  the  evidences  of  continued 
imiDrovement  in  the  world.  It  has  been  particularly 
a  year  of  revolt,  of  independence  and  of  the  results 
of  beneficent  revolution.  Our  platform  in  the  Mon- 
tauk  is  as  broad  as  the  universe  and  as  liberal  as 
truth. 

After  one  serious  break  which  broke  the  breakers, 
our  discussions  are  free.  It  is  understood  that  we 
are  of  all  creeds  and  faiths  in  religion  and  politics. 
It  is  understood  that  we  are  here  not  as  Repub- 
licans, nor  as  Democrats,  nor  as  Prohibitionists,  nor 
as  Mugwumps,  nor  as  Independents.  AYeare  here 
under  the  genial  banner  of  good  fellowship,  to  say 
what  we  please,  so  long  as  it  is  uttered  with  charity 
toward  all  and  with  malice  toward  none.  TTe  start 
with  the  maxim  that  no  party  has  a  monopoly  of 
virtue  and  no  party  a  corner  on  vice.  It  is  the 
party  in  power  out  of  which  virtue  oozes  and  which 
gradually  accumulates  vice.  Hence  we  have  the  con- 
ditions which  have  led  to  theiDhenomenal  overturn- 
ing since  last  we  were  here.  \Vheu  Kings  County 
changes  50,000  votes,  when  a  Republican  Mayor 
of  Xew  York,  by  the  changing  of  70,000  votes  one 


48 

way  to  40,000  the  other,  is  elected,  when  for  the 
first  time  in  ten  years  a  "Republican  Governor  and 
a  Republican  Legislature  get  into  power  by 
150,000  majority,  it  is  not  a  party  victory.  It  is 
because  the  good  men  of  the  majority,  finding  it 
impossible  to  purify  municipal  or  State  government 
within  the  organization,  join  the  minority  party  to 
teach  their  rulers,  organizers  and  leaders  a  drastic 
lesson. 

It  is  the  plain  teachings  of  such  events  that 
the  lucky  recipients  of  this  combination  of  party 
fidelity  and  party  disgust  have  it  in  their  power  to 
hold  a  sufficient  number  of  the  independent  and 
thoughtful  elements  which  came  to  them,  to  con- 
tinue for  a  period  the  power  in  their  own  hands,  or 
else  they  can  so  use  their  opportunities  for  personal, 
or  selfish,  or  purely  party  purposes  as  not  only 
to  drive  away  the  men  who  had  joined  them 
temporarily,  but  a  large  body  of  their  own  inde- 
pendent following.  In  this  way  it  is  quite  possible, 
if  we  may  make  such  a  metaphor,  for  a  party  to 
experience  within  a  twelvemonth  alternations  from 
zenith  to  zero. 

The  despair  of  the  publicist  and  the  sociologist 
has  been  the  government  of  cities.  The  inrushing 
from  the  country  and  from  abroad  of  desirable  and 
undesirable  peoples  and  the  rapidity  of  settlement, 
making  impossible  the  processes  of  assimilation, 
have  made  the  municipal  problem  the  despair  of 
the  statesman.      But  the  last    twelvemonth    has 


49 

solved  that  problem — solved  it  on  the  side  of  liber- 
ty, and  American  liberty.  It  has  demonstrated 
that  the  vox  popull  is  the  wx  Dei,  providing  the 
voice  of  the  people  can  find  some  medium  through 
which  it  can  be  heard. 

How  shall  the  voice  be  registered  in  legislation  ? 
When  a  committee  of  a  hundred  or  a  committee 
of  seventy  of  the  best  citizens  that  all  parties  may 
have,  who  have  the  confidence  of  their  fellow-citi- 
zens, present  a  programme,  and  that  programme  is 
adopted  by  the  public  vote,  it  carries  with  it  two 
instructions — one,  that  this  committee,  whose  pro- 
gramme was  accepted,  and  the  officers  who  were 
elected  are  the  chosen  representatives  of  the  people, 
upon  whom  the  peojple  have  i:)ut  the  responsibility, 
and  in  whom  the  people  repose  the  confidence  to 
frame  the  legislation  which  shall  do  away  with  the 
evils  under  which  they  have  suffered  and  bring  to 
them  the  reforms  and  good  government  for  which 
they  have  fought  and  voted. 

Any  declaration  by  statesmen,  however  wise, 
however  experienced,  however  conscientious,  from 
distant  communities,  that  these  committees  and 
the  officers  elected  on  the  wave  of  reform 
are  novices  in  politics,  that  they  do  not  know 
what  the  people  vv^ant,  that  they  do  not  un- 
derstand the  needs  of  great  populations,  that  their 
bills  are  foolish  and  their  measures  idiotic,  is  full 
of  danger  to  the  party  organization,  of  which  these 
gentlemen  are  the  leaders,  and   its  success  in  the 


50  ^ 

future.  It  may  be  that  tlie  measures  are  idiotic  ; 
it  may  be  that  they  are  not  wise,  but  the  peo- 
ple whose  representatives  have  framed  them,  as 
soon  as  they  are  defeated,  will  believe  that  they 
are  the  wisest  measures  ever  devised  by  man,  and 
the  oftener  they  are  defeated  the  more  they  will  in- 
sist upon  having  them,  or  punish  the  party  which 
defeated  them. 

An  event  has  occurred  during  the  year,  little 
noted,  and  yet  of  the  greatest  interest.  I  arrived  in 
Chicago  a  few  weeks  ago  to  find  candidates  lost 
sight  of  in  the  popular  discussion  of  a  principle. 
The  cabman  who  drove  me  around,  the  porter  who 
carried  my  bag,  the  waiter  who  stood  behind  my 
chair  in  the  hotel,  the  clerk  who  handed  me  the 
book  in  which  to  register  my  name,  the  ticket- 
agent  in  the  railway  depot,  and  the  conductor  on 
the  horsecar,  the  clerk  in  the  big  drygoods  store, 
and  the  elevator  boy  who  carried  us  to  the  infinite 
heights  of  the  Chicago  building,  all  wanted  to  know 
what  I  thought  of  Civil  Service  Reform.  The 
Legislature  had  passed  a  bill  submitting  to  the 
people  whether  their  offices  should  all  be  put  upon 
Civil  Service  principles  or  should  be  the  patronage 
of  party  leaders  as  theretofore.  The  result  of  this 
discussion  in  that  most  polyglot  and  cosmopolitan 
of  Western  cities  was  a  majority  of  50,000  for 
Civil  Service.  I  remember  when  reformers  with 
so-called  fads,  like  the  late  George  William 
Curtis,  suggested  Civil  Service  twenty  years 
ago,      how     it      was     scouted    by     all     parties. 


61 

We  all  of  us  who  were  active  in  politics  believed 
that  parties  could  not  be  run  except  by  patronage, 
and  we  all  of  us— and  I  as  readily  as  the  rest — de- 
clared that  without  patronage  a  party  leader  could 
not  hold  his  place  nor  a  party  retain  its  power.  It 
was  for  the  patronage  with  which  to  control  the 
organization  that  Weed  and  Greeley  split  their 
party  in  two  ;  it  was  for  the  same  high  purpose 
that  Conkling,  on  the  one  side,  and  all  the  leaders 
against  him  on  the  other,  kept  us  in  an  internecine 
war ;  it  was  for  the  same  lofty  object  that  the  State 
machine,  headed  by  Daniel  Manning,  and  the  city 
machine,  headed  by  John  Kelly,  disrupted  the 
Democratic  party  ;  and  patronage,  with  its  sup- 
posed power  and  influence,  has  those  eminent 
knights,  armed  cap-a-pie,  with  lance  at  rest,  at 
either  end  of  the  lists,  waiting  for  the  signal  to 
charge,  Grover  Cleveland  and  David  Bennett  Hill. 
And  yet  the  people  of  Chicago,  defying  the  poli- 
ticians, have  taught  them  that  government  can  get 
along  without  patronage.  Civil  Service  applied  to 
cities  solves  the  question  of  municipal  machines 
and  municipal  bossism.  To  that  must  be  added  the 
separation  of  city  elections  from  the  State  and 
general  elections.  So  a  man  can  vote  against  a  thief 
or  an  incompetent  man  in  his  own  party  for  mayor 
or  sheriff  without  destroying  the  tariff  or  passing 
the  bill  for  the  free  coinage  of  silver. 

The  processes  for  political  power  are  simple.      A 
few  masterful  men,  whose  business  is  politics,  and 


!rO  ~^ 


iJi 


who   believe  that  the  end  justices  the  means,  f]^et 
control  of  tlie  machinery  of  the  dominant  party  in 
the  municipality.    They  elect  their  mayor  and  their 
board  of  aldermen,  which   secures  for   them  the 
public     works,      the     docks,      water,      gas     and 
electricity,    and   that    gives    them    the   patronage. 
Then  they  appoint  the  judges  of   the  police  courts 
and  the  civil  justices,  and  that  gives  them  infinite 
power  over  the  liberty  and  property  of  the  citizen. 
Then  they  elect  their  members  of  the  legislature, 
and  that  prevents   the  governing  body  from  inter 
fering  with  them.     And  then  they  intimidate  the 
higher  courts,  so  that  no  complaints  will  be  enter- 
tained.     This  accomplished,  the  great  city  is  abso- 
lutely in    the   hands  of  a   feudal  baron,  with  his 
feudatories  around    him,  intrenched   in    the  City 
Hall.    The  city  treasury  supports  from  ten  to  twenty 
thousand  retainers  vvho  are  dependent  absolutely 
upon  the  barony  for  their  subsistence.     Through 
them  the  baron   holds   the   primaries,  controls  the 
organization,    overawes    inspectors,    manages    the 
count,   owns  the  court  and  carries  the  legislature 
in  his  pocket.      Then  we  have  this  amazing  condi- 
tion, that   the  processes  of  liberty  are   caxDable  of 
greater   tyranny  than   the    autocratic  will   of   the 
despot.     Despotism  is  tempered  by  the  opportuni- 
ties of  assassinating  the  tyrant.      Against  a  semi- 
republican  and  semi-oligarchical  government  like 
that  of  France  there  can  be  revolution,  but  against 
a  municipal  tyranny  owning  the  polls,  controlling 


53 

the  courts,  managing  the  finances   and   masters  of 
the    party   organization,    frequent   elections    pre- 
vent revolt,  and  there  is    nobody  to  assassinate. 
I  may  be  criticised  for  saying  that  the  processes 
of  liberty  can  be  made  more  tyrannical  than  the 
edicts  of  a  Czar,  but  you  all  remember  in  the  mar- 
vellous revelations  of  the  Lexow  Committee  that 
widow   whose  friends  contributed  a  few  hundred 
dollars  for  her  to  have  a  cigar  store  with  which  to 
support  herself  and  her  four  children.     She  kept 
house  in  one  room  and  sold  her  cigars  in  the  other  ; 
she  sent  her  children  to  the  public  school,  and  she 
was    doing    everything    which   a  good,    virtuous, 
masterful,   motherly  woman  could  do   to  bring  a 
family  up  respectably  and  keep  out  of   the  poor- 
house.  The  ward  policeman  wanted  the  contribution 
which    she   could   not    pay.     Refusing,    she   was 
hauled  to  the  police  station,  taken  before  the  police 
judge,  and  sent  to  the  penitentiary  for  six  montiis, 
and  when,  on  her  release,  she  returned  to  her  home 
she  found    her    little    stock    of  guods   had   been 
divided  among  the  ministers  of  the  law  and  her 
children  had    disappeared.      It    only  required   a 
policeman,  a  captain  and  a  police  justice  to  make 
possible    an    outrage    which    could    not    be    per- 
petrated in  any  other  country   or  in  any    other 
city    in     this     wide    world.      Now    civil    service 
in  municipal  affairs    makes    this    sort    of    crime 
impossible.     Masterful  men  will  always  be  leaders. 
They  will  always  have  a  following,  they  will  always 


54 


~j 


be  dominant  in  the  control  of  party  organizations, 
but  under  civil  service  there  will  be  no  thousands 
or  tens  of  thousands  of  retainers  supported  out  of 
the  city  treasury  to  defeat  the  taxpayers  who  pay 
them.  These  officers  will  be  relieved  from  party 
pledges  and  party  control,  and  the  leaders  must 
appeal  to  the  i>eople.  There  will  always  be  leaders, 
and  so  I  say,  '*  All  hail  the  leader  who,  like  Andrew 
Jackson,  or  Henry  Clay,  or  James  G.  Blaine,  or 
William  E.  Gladstone,  the  people  can  follow." 

And  now,  gentlemen,  the  year  having  proved  so 
eventful,  I  have  been  struck  with  the  questions 
which  are  brought  to  me  by  the  interviewer.  I 
have  found  that  if  you  wish  to  know  what  the 
people  are  talking  about  it  is  first  developed  by 
the  man  with  the  pad  and  pencil  who  drops  into 
your  house  or  office  and  wants  your  opinion  on  it. 
Two  questions  seem  to  have  been  started  sud- 
denly, and  each  assumed  at  once  world-wide  im- 
portance. The  first,  from  the  hitherto  unknown 
Dr.  Nordau,  of  Germany,  is:  "Is  the  world  de- 
generating?" The  second  is  Bismarck's  wonder- 
ful remark  in  his  eightieth-birthday  speech,  that 
he  never  received  any  happiness  from  his  succes- 
ses. I  beg  leave  to  diiier  with  both  of  these  eminent 
men.  The  facts  which  I  have  just  recited  show 
that  the  world  is  not  degenerating,  and  Bismarck, 
when  he  made  the  startling  observation  that  suc- 
cess brought  no  happiness,  ignored  the  fact  that 
his  success  had  brought  to  him  on  his  eightieth 


55 

• 

birthday  the  homage  and  devotion  of  the  German 
peoples,  not  only  in  their  own  land,  but  wherever 
they  might  be  all  over  the  world  ;  that  this  hom- 
age was  received  for  his  success  in  establishing 
German  unity,  and  for  his  success  in  illustrating 
the  possibilities  of  German  brains  and  German  en- 
ergy and  what  they  could  accomplish,  and  that  this 
tribute  of  love  and  affection  and  veneration, coming 
from  all  over  the  world,  gave  to  him  on  his  eightieth 
birthday  more  hapiuness  thanhad  been  concentrated 
in  all  the  days  and  all  the  years  of  his  past  exist- 
ence. "Is  the  world  degenerating  ?"  says  the  news- 
paper interrogator.  Certainly  it  is  not  in  the  liberties 
which  are  being  gained  for  the  people,  because  they 
are  increasing  year  by  year.  Certainly  it  is  not  in 
the  education  which  is  afforded  by  the  Government, 
for  that  is  enlarging  and  becoming  better  all  the 
time.  Certainly  it  is  not  in  standards  of  morality. 
Twenty-five  years  ago  Palmerston  was  Prime  Minis- 
ter of  England  and  Disraeli  the  leader  of  the  opposi- 
tion. Palmerston  at  eighty  had  been  detected  in  an 
intrigue  of  which  the  proofs  were  clear  and  positive. 
The  party  leaders  went  to  Disraeli  and  said  :  "  Let 
us  drive  him  from  oflSce."  Disraeli's  answer  was  : 
"  If  you  start  that  movement,  I  resign,  because  it 
will  lead  to  his  becoming  so  popular  that  he  will 
remain  permanently  in  j^ower."  Ten  years  after- 
ward the  same  thing  drove  Dilke  from  public 
life,  and  later  did  infinite  injury  to  Parnell, 
and  to-day  there  is  no  man  in  America  or  in  Eng- 


56 


-J 


land,  in  i')iiblic  life,  who  could  survive  the  clear 
proofs  of  a  violation  of  the  Seventh  Command- 
ment. All  these  things,  which  are  taken  as 
evidences  of  degeneration,  are  simply  the  nine- 
teenth century  cleaning  house  for  its  new  ten- 
ant, the  twentieth  century.  There  are  always 
about  the  old  house  rubbish,  unused  furniture, 
old  rags  and  the  remnants  of  filth  and  disease.  The 
good  tenant  does  not  leave  these  evidences  for  tiie 
new  one  to  discover  the  family  weaknesses  and 
criticise  the  family  habits.  The  nineteenth  century 
is  a  good  tenant  and  it  is  sweeping  out  fads  and 
humbugs  of  every  nature  and  description.  It  is 
gathering  them  up  and  putting  them  in  shape,  either 
to  bury  or  burn  them,  to  carry  them,  away,  or  to 
put  them  in  the  apartment  which  is  reserved  for 
things  which  are  to  be  brought  out  hereafter. 

We  have  labor  troubles,  and  yet  with  the  various 
solutions  of  paternalism  in  government,  of  arbitra- 
tion, of  co-oj)eration  and  educational  advantages 
bringing  capital  and  labor  nearer  together,  the  nine- 
teenth century  bids  fair  to  solve  the  problem  be- 
fore the  twentieth  century  comes  in.  We  have  had 
our  stage  Hooded  with  plays  which  made  the  heroine 
anything  but  what  she  ought  to  be,  until  the  play- 
wright believed  that  without  such  a  heroine  the 
l^lay  was  impossible,  and  we  have  simply  brought 
her  out  in  the  closing  years  of  the  century  to  ex- 
pose her  hideousness  in  order  that  the  twentieth 
misrht  not  find   her  in   the  house.     We  have  had 


57 

aestheticism  and  have  cultivated  it,  and  praised  it, 
and  honored  it,  and  finally,  when  we  found  it  was 
filth  covered  with  flowers,  we  have  buried  it  in  a 
felon's  cell  with  Oscar  Wilde.  We  have  had 
our  literature,  which  the  German  scientist 
especially  deprecates,  where  the  good  old  novel 
which  amused  and  inspired  us  and  brought  us  in 
contact  with  humanity  and  with  nature  for  the 
betterment  of  our  mind  and  soul  was  succeeded  by 
the  modern  experiment.  The  new  novel  came 
from  Zola  and  Tolstoi  and  Ibsen  and  their  like. 
It  came  to  preach  doctrines.  The  new  novel 
bored  us  with  sermons,  and  sent  us  to  bed 
with  the  headache,  because  of  problems  and  possi- 
bilities which  threatened  the  disruption  of  society, 
of  the  family  and  of  all  in  which  we  had  invested 
our  hearts,  our  hopes  and  our  future.  The  closing 
hours  of  the  nineteenth  century  are  getting  rid  of 
those  novels  by  rushing  frantically,  with  out- 
stretched arms  and  mouths  wide  open,  to  human 
nature,  humble,  fascinating,  plain,  common,  human 
nature,  in  Trilby. 

The  transparent  lesson  to  us  of  the  closing  hours 
of  the  nineteenth  century  is  that  while  the  century 
dies,  we  should  live  as  long  as  we  can.  We  can 
only  live  by  getting  out  of  life  all  there  is  in  it. 
What  is  happiness,  anyway  ?  While  I  do  not  dis- 
credit the  future  world,  but,  on  the  contrary,  be- 
lieve in  it,  according  to  the  doctrines  of  the  Church 
which  I  attend,  yet  we  do  not   personally  know, 


58 

either  from  those  who  have  come  from  the  other 
world,  or  from  revelations  received  from  there,  pre- 
cisely what  is  the  happiness  of  the  next  world. 
Our  problem  is  not  so  much  to  long  for  that  as  to 
find  our  happiness  here.  Where  is  it  ?  It  is  in  a 
healthy  mind,  a  healthy  soul  and  a  healthy  body, 
and  even  if  your  body  is  not  healthy,  you  can  keep 
the  other  two  in  fair  condition. 

The  secrets  of  happiness  and  longevity,  in  my 
Judgment,  are  first,  cherish  and  cultivate  cheerful, 
hopeful  and  buoyant  spirits.  If  you  haven't  them, 
create  them.  Enjo}'  things  ms  they  are.  The  rag- 
gedest  person  I  ever  saw  was  a  Turkish  peasant 
standing  in  the  field,  clothed  in  bits  of  old  carpet. 
But  the  combination  of  color  made  him  a 
thing  of  beauty,  if  not  a  joy  forever.  Let  us 
never  lose  our  faith  in  human  nature,  no  matter 
how  often  we  are  deceived.  Do  not  let  the  decep- 
tions destroy  confidence  in  the  real,  honest  good- 
ness, generosity,  humanity  and  friendship  that  ex- 
ist in  the  world.  They  are  overwhelmingly  in 
the  majority.  I  have  lost  twenty-five  per  cent, 
of  all  I  have  ever  made  in  loaning  money  and  in- 
dorsing notes,  and  have  incurred  generally  the 
enmity  of  those  I  have  helped  because  I  did  not 
keep  it  up.  But  every  once  in  a  while  there  was 
somebody  who  did  return  in  such  full  measure  the 
credit  for  the  help  that  was  rendered,  that  faith 
was  kept  alive,  and  the  beauty  and  the  goodness  of 
our  human  nature  were  made  evident. 


59 

I  have  appointed  about  one  thousand  men  to  office 
and  employment  which  gave  them  support  and 
the  chance  to  climb  to  positions  of  greater  responsi- 
bility and  trust  if  they  had  the  inclination  and 
ability.  About  nine  out  of  every  ten  of  them 
throw  stones  at  me  because  I  did  not  do  better  for 
them,  and  keep  pushing  them,  and  yet  there  are  a 
hundred  or  so  who,  by  the  exercise  of  their  own 
ability,  their  own  grasp  of  the  situation,  have  gone 
on  to  the  accomplishment  of  such  high  ambitions  and 
successes,  and  have  appreciated  in  so  many  ways 
the  help  extended  to  them  by  helping  others,  that 
again  my  faith  in  human  nature  remains  undimin- 
ished. And  my  last  recipe  for  happiness  is  to  keep 
in  touch  with  the  young.  Join  in  their  games,  be 
a  partner  in  the  dance,  rom^^  the  fastest  and  turn 
the  quickest  in  the  Virginia  reel  or  the  country 
dance,  go  up  to  the  old  college  and  sit  down  and 
light  your  i)ipe  and  sing  college  songs,  take  the 
children  to  the  theatre  and  howl  with  them  at  the 
roaring  farce,  and  laugh  with  them  at  the  comedy 
and  cry  with  them  at  the  tragedy,  be  tlieir  confi- 
dant in  their  love  affairs,  and  if  they  are  not  equal 
to  it,  write  their  love  letters,  and  never  stop  writing 
some  for  yourself. 

Thus,  gentlemen,  wall  the  twentieth  century, 
with  its  cleaner  purposes,  its  higher  endeavor  and 
its  limitless  opportunities,  welcome  us  older  fellows 
as  the  3^oungest  and  most  vigorous  of  those  who 
are  to  solve  its  problems  and  make  its  record. 


~; 


~J 


~J 


* 


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■■\- 


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»w*i 


